Mary Werbelow, Jim Morrison and the Doors

By ROBERT FARLEY
Published September 25, 2005

May 1944. Steve Morrison, a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, is called to duty aboard an aircraft carrier in the Pacific. He leaves his wife, Clara, and their 6-month-old, James Douglas Morrison, to live with his parents in Clearwater. They live there for three years.

Summer 1961. Jim's parents, living in Virginia, send their increasingly incorrigible son back to Clearwater to live with his grandparents, who run a coin laundry. He enrolls at St. Petersburg Junior College.

Summer 1962. Jim Morrison and Mary Werbelow meet on Clearwater Beach. She was finishing her junior year at Clearwater High. He just finished a year at SPJC and will head to Florida State in the fall.

January 1964. Jim starts film school at UCLA. Mary joins him in Los Angeles.

Summer 1965. Mary and Jim break up. He and Ray Manzarek start the group that becomes the Doors.

January 1967. The Doors release their first album.

July 25, 1967. Light My Fire hits No. 1 on the Billboard charts.

Sept. 17, 1967. The Doors perform on The Ed Sullivan Show.

October 1967. The Doors release Strange Days, their second album.

July 1968. The Doors release Waiting for the Sun, their third album.

Late 1968. Mary moves to India. She never sees Jim again.

Jan. 24, 1969. A month after performing before a television audience of 27-million on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, the Doors play to a sellout crowd of more than 20,000 at New York's Madison Square Garden.

March 1, 1969. Doors concert at Miami's Dinner Key Auditorium. Morrison is later arrested, accused of exposing himself. Promoters in city after city cancel scheduled Doors concerts.